In the "propaganda" thread that was propaganda. I was simply countering the blood & guts of the Dutch photographers, who were clearly exploiting the suffering to make a political statement.

One has to be able to discern and measure the impact any one site or source of information presents. Take Tom's link here. You believed that the Judge saw these things and recorded true recollections of the horrible suffering, mass graves and torture equipment he had seen on his trip to Iraq.

However, if I told you that no such Judge exists and that the story was an entire fabrication that came out of the Defense Intelligence Agency's "writer's workshop" - what would you believe? How sure are you of what your read. How sure is Tom?

You see why one must take all news even that which is backed with imagery with a grain of salt the size of a beach ball.

One must follow the web links, check out who holds the domain if possible, check and double check names and organizations to see what, if perceivable, is their agenda and track record. The web is like a library where the fiction and non-fiction sections are completely mixed up. It is the responsibility of the reader not to mistake Red Storm Rising for a historic account of Russia's submarine development. Even worse - the fiction writers on the shelves of this library are often intentionally deceptive as they pursue their agenda, making discernment even more difficult.

I'm not going to say if that link was real or not.

I think it would do everyone good one time just to see what it would take to corroborate or disavow Tom's link and try it for themselves. So in the future they would know what to do when presented with any news item or website that proclaims to be revealing secret truths. Then they would become much more informed web-surfers and see the tidal movements and ebb and flo power struggles behind the news.

Always stirring the pot,

SDAI-Tech1